Adafruit is making a kids' electronics puppet show!

The boundlessly wonderful folks at Adafruit are producing an online puppet show for kids aimed at teaching electronics. I could not be more happy about this without that I exploded.

Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Adafruit’s founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties.

“We’ll have each component have a story, a song and something to do,” Fried says. “We’ll have live feeds in our factory on how things are made. It’s a little Elmo for engineering, a little Mr. Rogers for resistors and a little Sesame Street for Circuits.”

Adafruit is familiar with online broadcasts, hosting weekly “Show-and-Tell” and “Ask an Engineer” shows on Google+ and Ustream for over three years. Circuit Playground was a natural extension for them. “We saw the audience and the participants getting younger with more advanced projects, so we figured there was something there,” Fried says.

Adafruit to Teach Electronics Through Puppets in New Kids’ Show [Mike Senese/Wired] (via /.)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: education • happy mutants • Kids • makers • tv • videos

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fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Meh. I found the personalities of the diodes to be excessively one-sided, the resistor is a total obstructionist, and the ‘electrolytic capacitor’ component was far too polarized for today’s political climate…
- http://twitter.com/adafruit adafruit industries
  
  the 555 is a good old timer :)
  - http://twitter.com/smknghrtdesigns SmokingHeartDesigns
    
    Except it puts spikes on the power supply rail. Very noisy. Cool idea for a show also. Maybe PBS will pick it up.
Bevatron Repairman

I hope she’ll include a new, clever (and not awful) mnemonic for resistance coding. I hate that Bad Boys, etc., is still stuck in my head after all these years.
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  I have the sneaking suspicion that SMT will do more than decency when it comes to eradicating dubious resistance stripe mnemonics…
- Robert
  
  I’ve always used Blackie Browned Red Oranges, Green and Blue Violets, and Gray Whites. I don’t see what the problem is.
Robert

I vote for any politician as the Flip Flop.
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  The one running on a family values platform is a ‘bistable multivibrator’, if you take my meaning…
Gilbert Wham

Maybe if I watch this, I will finally be able to remember resistor codes without looking them up. Though it’s possible I have a hardware glitch rather than faulty software – I can remember every postcode I’ve ever had, but none of my family’s birthdays.
- http://twitter.com/smknghrtdesigns SmokingHeartDesigns
  
  Convert their birthdays fully into numerals including month and day. The way you remember resistor codes is by building stuff. Constantly.
relmarboys

555 is a timer.
555 Spadina Rd, Toronto is a hidden power transformer.

On August 10, 2012, Relmar Boys released their song “Five ! Five ! Five !”

5 Days Later… on August 15th, Hans Camenzind, inventor of the 555 timer,
died. Shocking coincidence ?

http://www.relmar.ca